In the Library
by Short Hemline
Summary: While trapped in post-WWI Germany, Edward spends a lot of time reading. A series of drabbles. Anime-verse. Warnings for ableist language.
1. Prologue

_Prologue_

You intend to memorize this world. Beginning with the vaguely respectable trash literature displayed in front, you will work your way through to the most rarified academic journals languishing in the back. After a few months the mousy little thing behind the circulation desk––a sixty-year-old version of a woman you knew before––asks why you spend so much time in the library. You tell her, honestly. When she replies that such a thing is impossible, you counter that, on the contrary, you once knew a woman who read a library, rewrote it for you, and didn't change a single word. You tell her that this woman gave you what you needed, though she didn't understand it. As you stare at the librarian, you wonder what is different about her and what is not. She avoids you after this and never speaks to you again.

**Disclaimer:**

**I don't own _Fullmetal Alchemist_. I guess this is where I make some funny comment to the effect that if I _did_ own it I'd be rich, etc., etc., but unfortunately I'm not feeling particularly clever today. Sorry :(**


	2. Thanatos

_Thanatos_

You come to a book by one Sigmund Freud but toss it across the room once you reach his theory of the death drive. According to Freud, every man unconsciously wills his own demise. Freud is a moron, of course. No one wants to die. No one wants his mother to die, either, and no one wants to see his brother broken down until he is nothing but the most basic of elements. In defending his theory Freud refers to "an urge inherent in all organic life to restore an earlier state of things," but you know that the earlier state of things is really a pair of silver eyes and a head of golden hair––neither as bright as yours, but close enough. Despite the stupid things you have done, despite the deaths you have seen, despite the deaths you have caused, you didn't intend for things to just end. You intended to set things right. You decomposed your world, yes, but only in order to reconstruct it, only in order to resurrect that kind woman and that young boy, his face still round with baby fat. You only intended to restore your memory of them.

**Author's Note**

**Quote from **_**Beyond the Pleasure Principle**_**, published in 1920.**


	3. Footnotes

_Footnotes_

You bleed thoughts onto the margins. You're pretty sure library rules are the same in this world: Don't talk too loud. Don't return books late. Don't vandalize library property with arcane notes on the application of nuclear transmutation in modern weaponry. You're also pretty sure you don't care about the rules, so you pull out a pen and start making corrections. Unlike the alchemists of Amestris, who conceal their findings in code and cryptic language, the scientists of this world share their discoveries with colleagues in an effort to reach the truth together. In you the two worlds meet halfway, for while you add your voice to the discussion, the words you speak––or write––will never be heard or read, not in this library, not in the pages of a book whose spine only you have cracked.

And just as well, for your personal experiences tell you what will become of this research, once it comes to fruition. Do these scientists foresee the consequences of their investigations––the despicable and disastrous consequences? Do they intend to explode the world with their discoveries?

"Because you always intended to lose your arm and leg and brother to your experiments, didn't you, moron?" says the spiteful half of you.

"Well," responds the other half, "You learned something from the experience, at least." This rational half reminds you that mistakes are an essential part of the scientific process.

**Author's Note**

**The discovery of nuclear transmutation by Frederick Soddy and Ernest Rutherford in 1901 was part of a series of scientific breakthroughs that eventually led to the development of the atomic bomb.**


	4. The Burial of the Dead

_The Burial of the Dead_

Last night you dreamed of London, and of Al. The details, of course, have escaped you, as details in this world always do. Things are never as vivid as they used to be.

Can you really say, for instance, that you remember your time spent in London? That unreal city was vague to you even then, as if every present moment was nothing more than a relived memory. The familiar faces didn't make it any better. Neither, of course, did the opiates the doctors prescribed. As soon as you could stand on two feet again, stand and walk forward, Hohenheim accepted a teaching position at the University of Munich. You came along, if only to escape the haze of London.

In your dream, you walked on a bridge over a river called the Thames. Hundreds of people walked with you, but you could not hear them speak. You could not hear their feet shuffling over the cobblestones. You could not hear anything at all. And neither could you see Alphonse, though he walked right beside you. When you finally turned, when you finally turned and noticed him, the sharp cry you gave was soon swallowed up by the silence of the city, but you didn't care because it echoed in your head and in your heart because of the joy, because of the relief, because of the regret––he'd been with you the whole time! And Al glanced at you from the corner of his eye. He did not turn his head but put a finger to his lips, as if to say, "Quiet."

"He who was living is now dead. We who were living are now dying with a little patience." The man who wrote that is not from London, either, though clearly he knows the city well enough.

Light and colors, sharp smells and tastes, those things are for your memories. And some dreams. For some dreams, but not for all.

**Author's Note**

**Quote and some images taken from T. S. Eliot's **_**The Waste Land**_**. That in itself is a bit of an anachronism, since the poem was originally published in the UK and the US in 1922. This fic, on the other hand, takes place in 1921 (just before the end of the last episode of the anime, that is). Even if **_**The Waste Land**_** had been published a year earlier, I doubt it would have found its way to Germany until much later. But...whatever.**


	5. Kindness in a Tin Man

_Kindness in a Tin Man_

Clearly the children's books in this world were all written by lunatics. It's been a week since you began wading through this particular section of the library, and by now you just want to pummel each and every one of these beautiful princesses and hookah-smoking caterpillars and boys who won't grow up. Of course, you never liked the children's books back home, either. You didn't read them, not even before Mom died. Fantasy couldn't hold your interest. Sometimes you would dream of impossible things, but you always regretted it. And so you focused on Hohenheim's books instead. In those books you perceived a world governed by fact, detail, and reality.

"The Tin Woodman knew very well he had no heart, and therefore he took great care never to be cruel or unkind to anything." You cross your eyes at the book and make a gagging sound in the back of your throat. Irony is never so treacle sweet in the real world.

Admittedly fantasy in children's literature serves to reflect a reality of its own, a reality of archetype and symbolism. Everyone sees this reality differently. Most people are so self-centered they think the story is always about them. They believe they are the traveler, far from home. They think they're the man made of metal, without a heart.

And here's the irony: that Alphonse had to keep his soul in order to survive. It would have been impossible for him to go on without it the way the Tin Woodman did.

That you think of Alphonse long before you think of yourself––this is also ironic.

**Author's Note:**

**I actually adore children's literature, but I imagine Edward would feel differently. At any rate, the quote is, of course, from L. Frank Baum's **_**The Wonderful Wizard of Oz**_**. Again, not so sure if you'd be able to find that book in Germany in the 1920s, but we'll just pretend.**


	6. The Multiplier

_The Multiplier_

Alchemy doesn't exist in anything but fairytales, or so say the people of this world. Neither do men with metal limbs; the doctors in London were certainly incredulous of the stories you told. At first they even refused to help Hohenheim fit you with these prosthetics, pale imitations Winry's automail––your real arm and leg. To the people here, your old life would seem nothing more than a fanciful tale warning against the evils of hubris, instructing mortals not to stray too close to the sun. Your life, spoken aloud, is a children's story to them.

But you've graduated from storybooks and moved on to medieval literature. You can't decide which you hate better. Translating from the Middle English is certainly slow going, but not as slow as reading German. You find it easier to speak German than to read it. Strange, considering that these days you barely speak and only read.

But what's so strange about not speaking when there's no one to talk to? Who ties you to Munich? No one. You stay for no one. The only reason you're still here is the fact you've got nowhere else to go. Maybe you could go back to London or maybe you could move to Paris or New York or Transylvania, but still you'd be stranded here. Maybe the rockets you've been reading about could take you to the Moon, but really, where would that leave you? Here. You'd still be _here_. Even all these books you've read, even they can't––

"The philosopher's stone, called elixir, we all seek after hard…" Your breath catches at sight of that familiar, bloodstained word, and you hold back a sob of––terror, anguish, relief? How far would you go, this time, to take the impossible and transmute it into cold, scientific fact? Far. At least in your mind you've always desired to go much, much too far. "But such trusting and hoping bring discipline sharp and hard; I warn you well, it is ever to seek. That future tense, in trust thereto, has caused men to part from all that ever they had. Yet of that art they never think they have had enough."

You snap the book shut and swallow the rumbling in your throat. No matter where you look, you'll never find what you're searching for. It just doesn't exist.

**Author's Note:**

**Is it just me, or are these "drabbles" getting longer and longer? Oh well. Anyway, this time Edward is reading The Canon's Yeoman's Tale in Chaucer's **_**The Canterbury Tales**_**. I used a translation by Gerard NeCastro, which can be read at www. umm. maine. edu/ faculty/ necastro/ chaucer/ translation/ ct/ 23cyt. html.**


	7. Bildungsroman

_Bildungsroman_

You leave for Transylvania in four hours. After you reshelf this book you'll go to the apartment, pack your bags, and be gone. You'll be gone for a month, perhaps more if Oberth's work lives up to its potential. Maybe you'll say goodbye to Hohenheim before you go, maybe he'll be home when you leave, maybe he'll be there to see you off. Maybe he won't. You don't think Hohenheim needs you with him in Munich, and if he does you don't care. Sometimes you help him, around the house, but there's only so much an armless, legless _cripple_ can do. He's never said that, not out loud, but he thinks it. You can see him thinking it, just like you can see it when people call you "short" in their heads. So maybe they're right––maybe you are short––but that doesn't make you hate them any less for thinking it.

At times you agree with that look in his eyes, the one that says, "It's impossible to chop wood one handed, Edward. Don't even try." Somehow Hohenheim always knows when he's defeated you. When this happens he takes the ax from your hands and replaces it with a stack of essays his students have written. A consolation prize. You correct the papers with a red pen and deliver them back to Hohenheim wordlessly. But sometimes there are no papers for you to grade. On those days you do nothing but read in your room or in the library, which really isn't as bad as it sounds. After all, you and Al used to spend weeks and weeks together in the library, and if you hadn't read Oberth's article last month you'd have no excuse to be leaving this hellhole today.

Hohenheim isn't there when you get to the apartment. You throw your books and some clothes into a suitcase and rush to the kitchen to steal a loaf of bread for the train ride, wondering if you can get your things together and leave before he arrives. But there it is––the sound of his footsteps coming up the stairs, the sound of him fumbling for his keys at the door. A split second decision, and you're running back to your room, where he finds you lazily folding the once rumpled clothes that you had tossed into your suitcase only minutes before.

The old man didn't even know you were going to leave. Sure, you never told him about your plans, but he should've known anyway. He makes a stupid joke about Dracula when you tell him you're going to Transylvania, and it surprises both of you how calmly, patiently, and politely you explain to him about Oberth and the rockets. You don't even yell at him when he tells you it won't work.

"But you'll be fine. You'll always be fine." He thinks that and says nothing. You think it, too, and turn to leave.

_Owari_


End file.
